# culmen
## English
### Etymology

Borrowed from Latin culmen (“apex, acme”).

### Noun

culmen (plural culmens or culmina)
* Top; summit.
    Synonyms: top, summit, acme; see also Thesaurus:summit
** 1681, Balm from Gilead:the Shibboleth and Culmen of Honesty
* (zoology) The dorsal ridge of a bird's bill.
** 1997 June 20, “A Role for Ecotones in Generating Rainforest Biodiversity”, in Science‎, volume 276, number 5320, →DOI, pages 1855–1857:The measurements were taken as follows: wing length, from the carpal joint to the tip of the longest primary; tarsus length, from the tibiotarsal joint to the distal undivided scute; upper mandible length, the chord length from the point where the culmen enters the feathers of the head to the tip; bill depth, in the vertical plane level at the anterior edge of the nares.
** 1910, Alfred M. Tozzer, Glover M. Allen, Animal Figures in the Maya Codices‎:A very simple form was found in the carving shown in Pl. 17, fig. 13, where a long projecting knob is seen at the base of the culmen.

#### Derived terms

* culminal
* culminicorn

### Further reading

* “culmen”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.

## Latin
### Etymology

From Proto-Italic *kolamen, from Proto-Indo-European *kelH- (“to rise, be tall”). Doublet of columen.

### Pronunciation

* (Classical Latin) IPA: /ˈkul.men/, [ˈkʊɫ̪mɛn]
* (modern Italianate Ecclesiastical) IPA: /ˈkul.men/, [ˈkulmen]

### Noun

culmen n (genitive culminis); third declension
* stalk
* top, roof, summit, peak
    Synonyms: cacūmen, apex, vertex, fastīgium, summitās
    Antonym: fundus
* (figuratively) height, acme

#### Declension

Third-declension noun (neuter, imparisyllabic non-i-stem).

#### Descendants

* → Albanian: kulm
* Aromanian: culmã, culmi
* → English: culmen
* Galician: cume, cumio
* Italian: colmo, culmine
* Piedmontese: corm, colm
* Portuguese: cume
* Romanian: culme
* Romansch: culm
* Sicilian: curma
* Spanish: cumbre, → culmen
* → Swedish: kulmen

### References

* ↑ De Vaan, Michiel (2008) “columen, -inis (> Derivatives: culmen, -inis)”, in Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages (Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series; 7), Leiden, Boston: Brill, →ISBN, page 127

### Further reading

* “culmen”, in Charlton T. Lewis and Charles Short (1879) A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
* “culmen”, in Charlton T. Lewis (1891) An Elementary Latin Dictionary, New York: Harper & Brothers
* culmen in Charles du Fresne du Cange’s Glossarium Mediæ et Infimæ Latinitatis (augmented edition with additions by D. P. Carpenterius, Adelungius and others, edited by Léopold Favre, 1883–1887)
* culmen in Gaffiot, Félix (1934) Dictionnaire illustré latin-français, Hachette.
* Carl Meißner, Henry William Auden (1894) Latin Phrase-Book‎, London: Macmillan and Co. the summits of the Alps: culmina Alpium
* Collins Latin Dictionary, →ISBN

## Spanish
### Etymology

Learned borrowing from Latin culmen. Doublet of cumbre.

### Pronunciation

* IPA: /ˈkulmen/ [ˈkul.mẽn]
* Rhymes: -ulmen
* Syllabification: cul‧men

### Noun

culmen m (plural cúlmenes)
* height, high point
* epitome
    Synonym: epítome

### Further reading

* “culmen”, in Diccionario de la lengua española [Dictionary of the Spanish Language] (in Spanish), online version 23.8, Royal Spanish Academy [Spanish: Real Academia Española], 2024 December 10